


A Matter of Faith

by gooligan



Category: Avengers (Comics), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Incursion storyline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2483168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooligan/pseuds/gooligan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Tony never really talked about the Civil War.  Tony makes sure they talk about the Incursions.  Whether it does any good, on the other hand . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Faith

**Author's Note:**

> I have been a little frustrated at the one-sided view and simplistic look at another storyline of worldviews and schism. To the fanficmobile, Robin!

Steve had looked better 

Natasha tightened her grip on the box in her hands, studying the wrinkles on his face, the wispy, grey hair. 

"Natasha? Can I help you?"

His voice was still strong, vital, even if it wasn't quite like the hero she'd known so many years. She ran a thumb along the edge of one cardboard flap. "A courier brought this. It's from Stark."

Steve stiffened, dropping into parade rest. The white t-shirt didn't stretch the way it had over the body of the twenty-nine year old, but even in his eighties he stood straight, with military bearing. "Did you track him?"

She raised a brow. "You're asking ME that?" 

He hesitated, then grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. This has me on edge."

She mustered a small smile for him and nodded. Everyone knew what "this" was. Incursions and earth's destruction was bad enough but that wasn't anything new for the Avengers. The schism between him and Tony Stark . . .well. That also wasn't anything new, but it was always bad. 

Steve backed up a step and beckoned her in. "What did the monster send?"

Natasha smothered a sigh and walked over to the table by the window. The view out of the tower's windows was never going to get old, and made Steve'w words more jarring. She put the box down. "Cookies. Hot chocolate. Some kind of machine. No explosives."

"Poison?" He retrieved a cup of tea that he must have put down when she'd knocked on his door. 

"No. No poison, explosives, nanobots. As far as we can tell it is what it looks like."

He pulled out the box that smelled good enough to make his stomach - and hers - rumble. There was an envelope with his name on it. He pulled out the card. A grudging smile pulled at his lips. "Eat me."

"Can't go wrong with the classics." She pulled out the thermos for him and handed him the card that had been taped to it.

"Drink me." He met her eyes. Humor and pain were there in equal measures. "So how much did Clint 'test'?"

"He left you some. Under threat of pain. There are a lot of things you can say about Tony, but he does buy the good stuff."

Steve shut his eyes and let the mask fall away for a moment. Grief etched sudden deep marks in his face and put a tremor in his hands. He collected himself with a visible act of will. "Tony had a choice and he chose wrong. Here, let Clint have the rest of them."

She took the box of cookies he handed her, tucked it under her arm. "Have you tried to talk to him?"

The old man who had been young just a few weeks ago looked at her, eyes cold, then reached into the box. "It's Tony. The Futurist never listens to anyone but himself."

"That seems to be an occupational hazard." She kept a bland, calm look on her face when he glared at her. 

"There's right and wrong, Natasha. There are lines you don't cross." He pulled the third object out of the box. It was a cube, about eight inches square and etched with deeply engraved lines. She already know it was solid, and coded for someone other than her and Clint. A panel in the middle of one side had a sticky note by it with the words "push me" scrawled in familiar handwriting. Steve turned it this way and that, studying it.

"Do you want me to stay?" 

He was quiet, studying the cube. A muscle suddenly jumped in his jaw and he jammed his thumb onto the panel. "Sure, Nat. Not like I've got anything to hide."

As he spoke the cube broke apart in his hands, modules separating and spreading out with a soft hum of repulsors, eight of them in a rectangle, six more that hovered in the center of each side. A tall prism of light glowed between them. It quickly resolved into an image of a man, until Tony Stark's slightly transparent image stood there, looking at Steve. "You rang?"

"Really Tony? You couldn't even face me in person?" Disdain colored Steve's tone.

"Yeah, and that worked out so well the last time we were fighting." Tony's lips quirked into a small smile, but his amusement sounded strained.

Shame and regret flickered on Steve's face for a moment, then were gone. "You were wrong the last time, Tony. And you're wrong this time."

The hologram looked up and the modules on that side shifted, small lenses shining in the sides that faced Steve. They flickered briefly and he looked towars her, nodded, then looked back. "You're always so sure of yourself. I can't decide if I envy that or not."

The man who had been Captain America snorted rudely, lifted his chin. "The futurist who's so confident he'll murder billions? False humility doesn't suit you, Tony."

Tony's image went very still still, then breathed out a noisy sigh, slumping. "Why did you ask for this meeting if all you wanted to do was preach?"

Steve bridled, glare sharpening. "Maybe if someone had preached to you more, you'd know what you're doing is wrong."

"And what you're doing is right?" Curiosity and something complicated that she couldn't easily identify was there in his voice. 

"I can't believe you need to ask me that." And edge of anger and scorn crept into Steve's voice. "There was a time you stopped making weapons, Tony. Was it just because thousands wasn't enough for you?"

A moment of shock, then the expression was swept off Tony's face, leaving a wary, blank look in its place. "I think we're done here."

"Not until I say so." Command rang in the words. Steve shifted, back ramrod straight as he stared at the hologram, and the image of Tony Stark stared back. The tension slowly eased just a little and Steve let himself slump a bit. When he spoke again, he sounded a little lost. "I don't get it, Tony. You used to know what was right."

"I still do. And I know that sometimes there isn't any right answer you can choose."

"I told you the right answer." Steve gestured wide. "But instead you went the easy way, with weapons."

Tony's laugh was bitter. "No, you told me, told us all, pep rally platitudes and then stuck us with an impossible job and walked out feeling good about yourself, Steve. You don't get to smear that crap on me."

"You didn't even try!"

"FUCK YOU!" Tony had been standing, relaxed in the field of view but not anymore. He was suddenly moving, pacing out of the visual field then coming back, glaring at Steve. "FUCK you Steve. You act like this is easy, like it's something I want to do -"

"Could have fooled me! You were sure fast enough to pull out the guns again, Tony! And you took Reed and Hank and T'Challa and . . .and BRUCE with you? What did you tell them?"

"I told them the truth! I showed them the truth!"

"The truth is that you've murdered billions and you're going to murder billions more. We need a whole new name for your atrocities, Tony!"

"I'm why we're here to GIVE it a name!"

"If you'd just worked a little harder," Steve was twitching with the desire to move. If Tony had been there, she was sure he'd have grabbed, shaken the man. No, she was sure he'd have hit him. 

Tony was staring at him. "That's what you said before, Steve. 'Work harder.' 'Find an answer.' We found an answer, Steve. You just don't like it."

"You're answer is murder? Damn right I don't like it." Steve's voice was a low growl.

Tony suddenly sounded exhausted. "Yeah. My answer was murder. Or maybe I ought to call it self-defense."

"Bullshit." The obscenity sounded strange from him. 

"Maybe." Tony raked his finger through his hair, leaving it standing on end. "Maybe my answer was murder. And yours was murder-suicide."

It was Steve's turn to go still. Motionless, then rocking back on his heels. "What?"

"You heard me. Because that's where you were going to take us. Your answer, your way, and what was going to happen?" Tony stared out of the prism of light, and maybe he had an image of Steve there, maybe not. His eyes looked past his old friend, either way. "Your way was going to get us killed because we were nowhere near an answer. Maybe if we had months, more likely years, but next week or in a few weeks, when the next planet came? It'd smash us and they'd die just as much as if I'd killed them, and we'd die too. And then every world that came through after and hit the debris? Them too. And if the Black Swan told us the truth? That's just the beginning."

Steve let him finish. Natasha could see the slightest tremor in his frame, as he listened. Could hear him gulp and swallow. And suck in a breath. "I know you're an atheist. But you used to believe, Tony. You used to have faith in me."

Now the pain flooded back into Tony's face, twisting it for a moment before he hid it away. "I did."

"Where did that go? When did you stop believing in yourself, and in me?"

Tony shut his eyes, turned his head away. She thought he might break off the call but then he looked back, and out at them. "I lost faith in you, Steve, when you decided to sacrifice my world to your god."

She couldn't decide if she was sorry she couldn't see Steve's face just then, or glad that she only heard the small, choked sound he made.

When he finally spoke, there was a harsh, ragged note in his voice. "I can't believe you said that to me."

"I didn't want to. I don't want to." The answer was barely more than a whisper. "But Steve, you're ready to kill us all, no, you're ready to kill EVERYTHING in the name of your faith."

"I had faith in you!" 

"No. That's a lie." Tony audibly sighed. "That's a lie, Steve. I told you, we all told you, the truth. We didn't have an answer. Not now. Maybe in the future but we needed time. We NEED time. You're hunting us down, calling us monsters, but we're just people trying to save our lives, and yours, and buy the time we need. If you stop us now what happens?"

"What happens is you stop building weapons and you FIND us an answer!" Steve's words were fast, hard, but not as strong as they had been. 

Tony shook his head and gave a humorless laugh. "There's no time. No, you stop us and our world dies, and so does someone else's and so do all the others that follow it, just like I said. And Swan says we're some kind of trigger, the first domino in a chain. We die and so does everything in every dimension. The multiverse, Steve. You called me a murderer? That's true. But you and your faith, you make Thanos and Galactus . . . they're amateurs compared to you. I don't even have a word for that. It's more than I can imagine."

"It won't happen. You just need to believe."

"No." Tony put his face in his hands and dug his fingertips into his scalp. "You and your faith."

"Tony . . ." Steve reached out, fingertips brushing through light.

Tony looked back up. "You've been praying but I don't see your god coming to save us, Steve. Maybe you need faith. I need answers. And your faith isn't going to give them to me."

"The ends do not justify the means."

"That is so easy to say, but sometimes all of the answers are bad ones."

"I can't accept that the blood of billions is the price of our lives."

"It's not. The blood of billions is the price of the lives of EVERTHING, Steve, not just us. The choice is NOT us or them. It's them or all. You have paid that price in the past."

"No." Steve shook his head. "I would never."

"Not all the men you killed in the war were guilty, Steve. They were just soldiers, but you killed them."

"They were soldiers, Tony. They had a choice."

"They didn't sign up for you."

"We're talking about civilians."

"Yes. We are."

"You can't do this." Steve was pleading. Natasha wondered if he was pleading for worlds . . . or for himself.

Tony looked away. "I can't not."

"It's wrong, Tony. It will always be wrong." Steve spoke softly now. "If that's the cost of our lives, then how can our lives be worth it?"

Tony made a terrible sound, and looked back up. "Steve, why do you keep saying it's our lives, that it's us?"

"Because it is. That's what's asked of us. To make choices, and to do the right thing."

"And how do you know what the right thing is? It's one thing to choose that for yourself, Steve, but it's another to make that choice for you, and me, and Reed, and Sue, their kids, everyone, everyone's kids, everything, all of it. That's what you're doing, you know. It's not a choice to murder or not, Steve. I murder one world, and you murder two, then everything else dies too. How is that right? Don't you see it, I'm trying to buy time."

 

"For your weapons." Steve spat out the words.

"To answer your faith." Tony replied.

"I can't accept that." Steve shook his head, saying no with his body as well as his words. 

And Tony shook his head too, a sharp gesture of disbelief. "The universe isn't asking."

Natasha watched them, as she had all along, in silent horror. As they stood and glared at each other, she felt the sweat that rolled down her sides, felt the distant fear that came as she considered their words and the fates that stood in the balance. If they asked her what she'd choose . . . it was a question she wasn't sure she could answer.

Steve finally spoke again, and his answer was clear. "Survival cannot be the only thing."

Tony smiled sadly. "No. It's not. But if you don't survive, you never get to the rest."

"Find another answer, Tony."

"Live with the one I gave you, just for a little bit more, Old Man."

Steve sighed. "Older than I was. And a little bit more may be all I have."

"Yeah, I know." Tony shut his eyes, rubbed hard at a spot between his brows. "Have they found anything?"

From the way his jaw moved she could see that he'd smiled. "They found I'm old."

Tony huffed. "Ever think maybe it's a sign?"

"Of what?" Steve sounded genuinely curious.

"Well, the serum seems psychoactive, Steve. The Hulk, the failed soldiers, you . . . maybe it's like Mjolnir and it only works if you're sure you're worthy."

Steve huffed a small laugh. "Nice try. You're still wrong."

"I'm not a monster." All the humor had dropped, and Tony's face was suddenly terribly earnest. 

There was another of those long pauses, and then Steve said, "You don't prove that by killing worlds, Tony."

"Sins of commission, Steve. Sins of omission don't prove your virtue."

"I . . ." Steve waved his hands, but no more words came. He finally let them drop to his sides.

Tony nodded. "Monsters. Yeah. I know."

Steve reached out to brush the light again, then let his hand drop. "I miss you. I hate you."

Tony smiled gently and picked up a tablet, tapped in a few commands. He looked up at Steve again. "I know."

The hologram went out, and Steve turned look at her, then out at the city, where the sun was going down. 

Natasha watched it with him until it was night outside, and their images were superimposed, pale and transparent, over the darkling world.


End file.
